Anna and Trenton

How We Met

It all started back in 2015; I had written and recorded a song called “Fragile” that was being played world-wide. A year later, I felt inspired to write my cousin who was serving a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Guadalajara, Mexico and felt like I should write him weekly. Months later, I received an email from my cousin talking about how he and a group of missionaries were listening to my song, “Fragile”. He then told me about a buddy of his that he had been serving with named Trenton Petersen; he told me how he had just returned home and that we really needed to go on a date together! He gave me his Instagram username and described him as such an amazing guy and encouraged us to get in contact with each other. We then began talking and I later found out that he was with my cousin when he was listening to my song “Fragile” and told my cousin that he needed to “hook me up with her when he get home!” So my cousin did just that! We began talking and we went on our first date. It honestly was love at first sight, for both of us!

I fell absolutely head over heels for this Trenton Petersen. He was such a gentlemen, opening my door for me every single time, asking me questions about myself, pulling out/pushing in my chair for me at the restaurant, etc. I was absolutely smitten! It was a few weeks later when he asked me to be his girlfriend. He had accompanied me to a family party where my little cousins danced around us, pointing their fingers at us screaming at the top of their lungs, “You’re dating! You’re dating! You’re dating” I started to feel really embarrassed, but my embarrassment quickly went away after watching the way Trenton reacted to the situation. We then left the party and set up my new hammock in my backyard. We sat in it together, laughing, talking, crying as the hammock fell off of the tree bringing us straight to the ground.

After a couple minutes he said, “Hey Anna? Can I ask you something? It’s about what your cousins were talking about…” I began to laugh as I recalled the memory of earlier that day when my cousins were poking him in the face yelling “You’re dating!” I said yes and told him that I remembered what they were teasing us about. He then asked, “Are we dating?” I looked at him kind of funny and said something like “Yeah, I thought that’s what we were doing” (lol). He laughed and said, “Okay good. That brings me to my next question… I feel like an elementary kid asking this… but will you be my girlfriend?” I said YES or course, or else I wouldn’t be staying up till 3 in the morning writing this post for HowTheyAsked.com! :P

how they asked

It was a warm and snowy Saturday in Salt Lake City when I pulled up to meet my boyfriend, Trenton, at his home. He had explained to me weeks before that he wanted to take me out on a nice date before we got engaged. Now… In the meanwhile, I thought the ring was still at the jewelers and was told that the ring wasn’t going to be finished for another two weeks! Well, my family totally lied and gave the ring to Trenton! So at this point, I honestly believed that he was just being his typical romantic self by taking me on a nice date like he said he would before we got engaged. We were standing in his kitchen when he told me that he wanted to take me on a photo scavenger-hunt type of date! He then handed me a card that was titled “Petersen Home” and told me to read it out loud. He wrote about how our two homes have been significant places in our relationship and why it meant so much to him. After totally swooning at how cute the note was, we said goodbye to his family and embarked on our journey!

He surprised me by taking me to some of the significant places we had gone on dates earlier in our relationship. He surprised me at every stop, and for every place we went, he gave me a paper that told me why this place was so special to him. He took me to where we had our first date, he took us to the park we watched a movie at and right in the middle of the movie the sprinklers turned on and completely soaked us (totally like High School Musical), and he even took us to the apartment that we are going to live in. He drove us to 9 different places all over the Salt Lake and Provo area.

It was after the 8th stop (our future apartment) when I started to catch on and think “wait a minute… is he going to propose?!” I secretly began freaking out when I remembered he didn’t have the ring. Then, right before I knew it, his best friend called wanting to play Halo. So I thought, “if he was going to propose, his best friend would’ve known about it.” So I shook it off and continued enjoying the wonderful date!

The last place he took us to represented the places we couldn’t drive to that day: California, Brighton Ski Resort, etc. As we walked in, I immediately felt so special when we walked into the room; it was decorated with beautifully hung pictures of us with beautiful Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling with a fancy set dinner table with yummy dinner on it. At this point, I’m still absolutely clueless!

This is just how Trenton is, he’s a very romantic guy, so I was totally thinking that this was just a cute date he had planned. We ate the most exquisite Coconut Curry Indian food before we walked around, looking at all of the pictures hanging on racks. He then walked me over to the white Grand Piano in the corner of the room and played my favorite piano song for me, “River Flows in You.” After a couple minutes at the piano, we moved over to the bean bag that was placed in front of a screen under a projector. We began watching a slideshow that had all of the pictures we had taken from the scavenger hunt, but something was new; there were pictures of us from different angles (like other people had taken pictures of us at every place that we had gone to). I was so confused!

I kept screaming “what the heck?! There are so many different angles?! Who was taking pictures of us and following us?!” Trenton just laughed and cried “I’m not telling!”

We sat there for a minute while I tried to wrap my mind around everything. He then pushed re-play on the video and our song came on. (Story behind our song: I was eating some left overs at his kitchen counter top when he yelled from across the room “Alexa,” (the Seri machine/speaker from Amazon) “Play romantic music.” He then came over to me while I had steak in my mouth and we danced to the most beautiful song I had ever heard.

Since then, we adopted “Close Your Eyes” by Michael Buble and it became “our song.”) As we danced, he asked me what my favorite part about tonight was and I told him that I loved right now: watching the video, eating a wonderful dinner, the nicely decorated room with pictures from our past dates. And then it happened. The moment I had dreamed about since I was a little girl. He then looked me in the eyes in the most tender and loving way said, “I think you’re going to have a new favorite part.” And right then and there, he kissed me and began reaching for something in his back pocket. The next thing I know, he’s kneeling on one knee with an open box in hand, revealing the ring that I thought was still at the jewelers, saying “Anna, will you marry me?”

I was always a hopeless romantic growing up. I talked about my wedding day and the man I would marry since I was 5 years old. It was as if the world stood still and the only two people to exist was the two of us. I said YES and we continued bawling our eyes out together.

It was honestly the most well-thought out and PERFECT engagement for us! I love this man with every fiber of my being and I can’t wait to spend forever loving him even more (which I didn’t think could be possible).